In November 1780 the literary wit Horace Walpole critically observed to the Revd William Cole:

Walpole was commenting upon Pennant's propensity to travel and write at speed: in his opinion, the succession of topographical works which Pennant produced from the early 1770s onwards were superficial, too hastily flung together, and consequently lacking in scholarly depth. They included his two tours of Scotland, published 1771 and between 1774 and 1776, and his Tour in Wales which appeared in two volumes between 1778 and 1783. Walpole's charge that Pennant seldom had time ‘to digest anything’ will be addressed dur- ing the course of this chapter, but what is important to note here is the fact that his contemporaries had detected a distinct change in Pennant's literary output during the 1770s. Prior to this date he had only published works on natural his- tory, his magnum opus being his British Zoology which appeared in stages under the auspices of the London-based Cymmrodorion Society between 1761 and 1766. This work gained Pennant critical acclaim and established his reputa- tion as a leading scholar in the field of natural history, especially in ornithol- ogy and zoology. It was followed in 1769 with an Indian Zoology and in 1771 with the Synopsis of Quadrupeds. What contemporaries like Walpole identified, then, was a move away from the production of natural history publications which had so dominated his academic studies during the 1750s and 1760s, towards a series of topographical works which described tours through previ- ously little explored regions of the British Isles such as the Scottish Highlands and the mountains of north Wales. The principal aim of this chapter is to determine at what stage, if at all, it is possible to detect a change of emphasis in Pennant's writing, and if so how and why such a change might have taken place.